Abstract

The appearance of a third edition shows that this book meets a need for a concise treatise in the French language on the epidemiology, prevention and control of tropical diseases. The title is misleading, however, since the text seems to be written with only the French colonial doctor in mind. For instance the distribution of A. labranchiae is given as North Africa, that of A. darlingi as French Guiana, and that of A. minimus as Indochina. It is in fact something more and something less than a compendium of tropical endemic diseases. On the one hand it includes many diseases not ordinarily considered to be tropical, such as pneumococcal and meningococcal infections, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, typhoid fever, infectious hepatitis, etc., which are important enough to the colonial doctor, but which he will find, together with other common diseases of mankind, more fully described in his general medical textbooks.